The Fiscal Suicide of 2020
The Inevitable Has Arrived The Fiscal Suicide of 2020 was the single largest economic crash and collapse in human history, resulting in over 90% of world governments crumbling under their own weight. The event brought about the rise of megacorporations in the K4 Universe. History Signs of an upcoming economic decline were obvious long before it happened, and many large companies took steps to safeguard themselves from any of the harmful effects of such a crash. Governments, however, believed that no collapse was coming and as such failed to prepare. Instead, the governments of the world continued to increase inflation and worsen the world economy through trade and further acquisition of insane debt. Kodian Enterprises decided that it needed to show the world the consequences of their wasteful and foolish actions, and set out on a plan to bring about a worldwide economic shutdown. In 2020, Kodian Enterprises manipulated its own stock values so fast and in such large quantities that it shook the entire global stock market. The ripple drove people to sell their shares en masse, furthering the spiral. By the time the sun set on the first day, the world economy was in shambles and many European nations suddenly found themselves unable to afford even the most basic of amenities. World powers attempted to slow the bleeding of their funds by shutting down trade with other nations, or cutting off aid. By the end of the week, over 50% of the world was without a functioning economy. By the end of the second week, 90% of the world was without a functioning economy, as major trade powers like the United States and China had their internal economies crumble in on themselves. Only nations that still relied on the gold standard were left standing. Nations that still had stockpiles of gold or other precious materials, like the US, maintained some of their prevous economic weight, and Kodian Enterprises then began the second phase of its plan. The US gold stockpile, located at Fort Knox, had become a warzone. The United States governmental bodies had been moved there from Washington D.C. after a few days of the economic collapse. Rioting in the streets and areas around the fort started and seemed determined to continue, with the people demanding that the government step down from power and allow the people to reorganize it. The government, in turn, turned the armed forces against the local populace, promising anyone that remained loyal that everything would be fine as soon as the government could sell their gold. Kodian Enterprises organized resistance and turned their sizable security forces upon the US government, claiming that they "had been hired by all the citizens of the United States," and were "not accepting payment in anything but gold." Fort Knox fell into the hands of Kodian Enterprises a few days later, acting as the official birthing of the world's first megacorporation. Similar events occured in China and Japan and Europe, many of them by Kodian Enterprises. With the company now in control of a majority of the world's gold stockpile, the global economy would be locked down until the company said it could begin healing. Once other companies revealed themselves to have survived the fiscal suicide attempt, Kodian Enterprises sold large portions of its gold, instated the Kollar as the official world currency, and jumpstarted the global market back to life singlehandedly. This required that Kodian Enterprises relinquish massive amounts of its recently-acquired assets, but the company was willing to part with literal billions of dollars of gold and precious materials in exchange for bringing about this new, cyberpunk world order. With the company's consent and actions, the global economy was reborn in the form of the megacorporations, with only a few million people having died as a result of the Fiscal Suicide. Following the crash and rebirth of the global economy, the megacorporations twisted the facts, and painted the crash as the work of faulty government bodies and inept world leaders, claiming that the megacorporations had swooped in to save the world from submerging itself in unending chaos. This alteration of history gives the megacorporations far more legitimacy than they deserve.